Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a photovoltaic device.
The present invention further relates to a method of manufacturing a photovoltaic device.
Related Art
Most organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices are produced in an electrical series configuration. In this way Ohmic losses in the poor conducting transparent electrode and other current conductors is reduced. However, local shading of the one or more of the cells in this series arrangement (due to tree and chimney shading, bird poop, leaves sticking to the surface of the photo voltaic device etc.) gives rise to severe power losses. The shaded cells, do not conduct current very well. Moreover, the shadowed cell or cells may become reversed biased because of the voltage generated by the unshadowed cells. Reverse biasing of a cell can cause degradation in cell performance or even complete cell failure. A way to overcome this problem is the use of bypass elements such as bypass diodes or more sophisticated bypass circuitry. US2007089779A discloses a system comprising a photovoltaic cell and a diode. The photovoltaic cell comprises a first hole carrier layer, a first hole blocking layer, and a photoactive layer between the first hole carrier layer and the first hole blocking layer. The diode comprises a second hole carrier layer and a second hole blocking layer. Therein the first hole carrier layer is electrically connected with the second hole blocking layer, and the second hole carrier layer is electrically connected with the first hole blocking layer. It is a disadvantage of the known system that it is restricted to a bypass diode as the bypass element.